Ballot question expands the bottle bill; good!

I was just a kid when Massachusetts lawmakers passed the bottle bill in 1983.

I remember the pre-bottle bill days, when my brother and sister and I would collect up aluminum cans and glass bottles and bring them to recycling centers — they looked like junkyards — and were paid by the pound. We had great fun pounding aluminum cans flat with mallets, so we could fit more of them in the bag.

I distinctly remember bringing our beat-up station wagon over a scale with our trash cans full of glass bottles, having it weighed, taking out the trash cans, and weighing the car again. The difference in weight was what we were paid. I never got a straight answer as to why it wouldn't be easier to just weigh the trash cans full of glass. One recycling center employee told me the glass wasn't heavy enough to register on the scale.

I suspect, in hindsight, that my siblings and I were being cheated. But the fun of pouring that glass from our cans into huge containers — and hearing the tinkling of breaking glass down below — was the real thrill of the trip.

We also felt like we were saving the world from trash, one Schlitz bottle and Cott soda can at a time.

When the bottle bill passed, we suddenly could make real money on trash. My paper route became half deliver, half search the roadside for the "right" bottles. I can tell you for certain that I stopped picking up bottles that weren't worth a nickel. No matter how much fun smashing the cans and listening to the glass breaking was, it did not compare to cold hard cash.

Later, when I lived in Allston as a recent college graduate, my friends and I would put out our (ugh, too many) beer and soda cans in bags on the sidewalk, to be picked up by an elderly Asian lady who picked through the recycling bins on our street and filled her shopping cart. We felt our debauchery, at least, had the good outcome of supporting her.

And now, as a dad, I have introduced my kids to recycling. They like putting our cans and bottles into machines, and listening to the satisfying sound of them being smashed or squashed flat. Then a little slip comes out, worth money.

For me, the bottle bill to me is recycling, a modest anti-poverty measure, and is entertaining to my children. What's not to love?

For almost as long as the bottle bill has been in existence, advocates have pursued its expansion. Why does it make sense to put a deposit on soda and beer, but not sports drinks, water, juice, and cider? In most cases, the containers are exactly the same. Yet this seemingly arbitrary rule about what is worth a deposit and what is not made a soda bottle valuable and a water bottle worthless.

Year after year, the advocates would take their case to the Legislature. And year after year, they were shot down.

Finally, advocates got tired of regular rejection, and have successfully put the question to voters on Nov. 4. The bottle bill expansion will be Question 2.

Three other ballot questions will be attaching increases to the gas tax to the Consumer Price Index (Question 1); prohibiting casino gambling and slots parlors (Question 3); and a law entitling employees to earn and use sick time (Question 4).

According to MassPIRG, one of the groups that has pushed for the bottle bill's expansion and helped gather the 11,485 signatures necessary to place the issue on the ballot, 80 percent of containers with deposits in Massachusetts are recycled, instead of buried in landfills or burned in incinerators.

Conversely, only 20 percent of containers without deposits are recycled, meaning that over 1 billion water, energy, juice and sports drink bottles are thrown away or burned up each year.

When a bottle with a deposit is not turned back in for the nickel, that money goes to the state. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, which also is in favor of the bill, wrote that the state stands to earn $20 million more in unclaimed deposits in the first year the bill is enacted. That is on top of the estimated $34 million a year that the bill already generates for the state coffers each year.

Opponents of the bottle bill, who have successfully turned away previous attempts to expand it, say the bill is anti-business.

Chris Flynn, president of the Massachusetts Food Association, argued in a Boston Globe op-ed piece that the bill "is a new tax on Massachusetts families." He said that businesses like supermarkets and grocery stores "will act as redemption centers" that will "increase overhead costs and give up valuable retail space." These overhead costs, he argued will trickle down to consumers, and could imperil 4,000 jobs across the state.

Mr. Flynn estimated that the bottle bill's expansion could add $58 million on the amount that families spend on groceries each year.

And he argued that the bottle bill's expansion would only increase the state's recycling rate by one-tenth of one percent.

The way to really make a difference in recycling rates, he wrote, is to institute pay-as-you-throw recycling in the state's cities and towns. That controversial but effective method forces consumers to make the choice between recycling — which is usually free — and spending more money to throw those recyclable items away. The Massachusetts Food Association has been funding pilot programs to encourage more communities to adopt pay-as-you-throw.

I accept these arguments as valid. I know in my heart that expanding the bottle bill is probably going to end up costing consumers more money, and that money will flow to state government. That irks me.

But I'm also certain that, after faithfully returning soda and beer cans for 30 years, when faced with Question 2 in the ballot box on Nov. 4, I will vote yes on Question 2. I suspect that more than 50 percent of my fellow voters will do the same.

Aaron Nicodemus can be reached at aaron.nicodemus@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter at @anic89.

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